


on the edge of chaos

by ultraviolence



Series: snapshots and butterflies (life is strange au) [1]
Category: Fate/Apocrypha, Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms, Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Fluff, Drabble, Kissing, M/M, Merry Angstmas and Happy Holigays, Time Loop, Time Travel Fix-It, life is strange au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 03:29:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13204911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultraviolence/pseuds/ultraviolence
Summary: “Go on, Juna. Go and make your older brother proud.”Arjuna, Karna, and a storm. Life Is Strange AU, sort of.





	on the edge of chaos

**Author's Note:**

> Welp. I'm so late into this fandom. Regardless, I hope you guys enjoy! This ship has been tugging at my heartstrings lately. Oh yeah, fair warning for the spoilers about the end of the game, if you haven't played it/played it until the end. You've been warned.
> 
> For max feels: listen to Lana Del Rey's Burnt Norton Interlude & Change while reading this.

He let his half-brother die.

It wasn’t a presupposition, of course, nor a probability, but a fact. It wasn’t that he had no choice. He could have let himself be selfish, for once— _why are you so selfish_ —but he remembered the quiet urgency in which Karna pressed the photograph to his hand, utterly selfless until the very end. Go on, then, he says, half-smiling, it suits you. Arjuna knows _exactly_ what he means. Then he felt the other’s fingertips on the corner of his lips, as if Karna was trying to make him physically smile.

“It doesn’t become you,” he says, but said nothing more about the impossible choice or the storm, or what’s between them and beyond love. Arjuna smiled.

“It always seemed like you left me with your mess to clean, older brother,” he joked, lightly, a small light wavering in the storm. He could swear that his older brother doesn’t lose his composure nor his brilliance. If anything, there was a certain majesty in him, knowing that he was going to die, accepting his death. 

More than that: accepting that he was supposed to die in the first place, ever since Arjuna photographed the blue butterfly in the men’s room.

“Now that’s something I don’t hear often,” the other man said, pulling away, but Arjuna caught his hand. “Go on, Juna. Go and make your older brother proud.”

It was then that he felt the strange trickle of a tear, and Arjuna quickly wiped it away. He’d sworn to himself that he would never let his older half-brother saw his tears, ever since he was a child. But it was too late, because Karna had seen it, and frowned.

“Why are you crying?” he questioned, tilting his head to a side like he always did. Arjuna could feel himself dying a little inside each second, especially remembering how well he knows him, and how well he had gotten to know him, during the last week. Their mother, he could imagine Karna say, would be proud. “It’s not that big of a deal. The town is worth more than me. There is— there is our mother there, Arjuna. You wanted to save her, don’t you?”

He did. But he also wanted to save Karna. Arjuna closed his eyes, letting another tear trickle down his face, wishing that he could at least capture this moment, forever frozen in time and yet continued marching on.

He opened his eyes to a soft kiss on his lips, and he felt his heart stopped.

“For good luck,” Karna said, shyly, softer than usual. Arjuna pulled him back in and they shared a proper kiss, a chaste one, and the heat of Karna’s mouth and the taste of his lips is something he would always remember. Arjuna doesn’t need a camera for that.

“Is this the end?” Arjuna blurted afterwards, breathless. He doesn’t want it to end. He never wanted it to end. _Why are you so selfish_.

“—no,” Karna said, after a short while, his gaze turned away from Arjuna’s. “You know I’ll always be with you, Juna. Look after our mother.”

In another universe, Arjuna would rip the photograph and let the storm wreck Arcadia Bay. In another universe, they would drive together through the wreck. But he knows Karna would never forgive him, for valuing his life over the town’s—and over their mother, who abandoned him ever since he was a child, who always, always doted on Arjuna, her golden child. More than that, he knows that a part of him would be hollowed out, empty forever, even if he had his brother, even if they moved to Seattle with Karna’s father or to New York with his. 

And so, Arjuna murdered his brother in cold blood. He closes his eyes once more, wiped away the tears, and let his gaze fell upon Karna one last time. “Goodbye, brother,” he said, a whisper over the storm raging in the background.

“I’ll be seeing you,” Karna said, smiling.

And he touched the photograph and went back in time.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, comments and suggestions welcome (prompts are welcome too for this ship)! I'm such a sucker for this AU, haha. 
> 
> Happy early New Year! <3


End file.
